Lou-Host Jablonski
Artists at the Union Corners site assemble the structure that will hold canvas panels.
One of the boldest openings on May 6 Gallery Night will not occur inside a tony downtown studio. It will be outside, at an east-side construction zone.
The Intentionally Welcoming Community will be unveiling a large, collaborative art work at Union Corners, the 11.4-acre mixed-use development site at the corner of East Washington Avenue and Milwaukee Street that broke ground in September.
The exhibit will be framed by a structure inspired by the communal longhouses built by Native Americans. The frames will hold 2-by-8-foot canvas panels contributed by more than a dozen community advocacy organizations.
The “Intentionally Welcoming Community” theme comes from the adjacent Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara Neighborhood Association, which adopted it as a motto several years ago.
The idea has since been taken up by a diverse group that’s planning cohousing at Union Corners, a cooperative housing model with a combination of shared and private spaces.
“There’s just one problem with ‘Intentionally Welcoming Community,’” says Susan Thering, executive director of the nonprofit Design Coalition Institute, which is spearheading the cohousing project. “How do you put that motto into action?”
Each of the organizations is providing a panel interpreting what the theme means to them. Some of the groups have artists in-house. Others are being guided by Thering and project coordinator John Steines.
Participating organizations include Art Working; Badger Rock Middle School Coaches Club; East Madison Community Center; Edgewood Nurses; Farley Center for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability; New People Emerge/Call for Peace; Goodman Community Center Youth Program; Kajsiab House; Madison Music Makers; Period Garden; Rodney Scheel House/Union Triangle; and UNIDOS.
Thering says the idea behind the installation is to facilitate interaction and understanding among groups. “It’s a way really of counteracting a lot of the tensions that have built up over the last several years,” she says. “Racial tensions and homophobic tensions and tensions around immigrant communities and that sort of thing.”
Project coordinators and documentarians Johnny and Marie Justice are recording the process, and the plan is to hold group discussions on and off the site. The exhibit will stand at Union Corners for 10 weeks, and if the panels survive the elements, they will be re-exhibited in the future.
The project was funded by grants: $1,500 in a Blink Grant from the Madison Arts Commission and $2,500 from the neighborhood association. For more information, visit the Intentionally Welcoming Communities Facebook page.
